No need for thanks, local student tells SISTEM conference

A student from Westmeath is asking people to give up good manners as part of their campaign to reduce their carbon footprint.

“It is time to stop thank you emails for good,” Megan D’Arcy told a Tech Conference in UCD at the weekend, “just add it to your email signature or put it in your information – as a policy we do not send thank you emails.”

Ms D’Arcy, a past pupil of Castlepollard Community College, presented at SISTEM, Ireland’s largest tech conference for students on the small measures that can be adopted to reduce your digital carbon footprint.

Her presentation was on ‘internet pollution’.

“Sistem, is in its fifth year,” said Megan “and it has a mission to inspire the next generation of tech. It is a great conference and I was delighted to travel down from Belfast to present on this topic.

“It would be great if one takeaway from my talk is that simply knocking on the head all the unnecessary emails – the ‘thank-yous’, the ‘have a good weekends’, ‘received’, ‘cheers’, ‘you too’ and ‘Lols’ can have the same impact as reducing hundreds of transatlantic flights.”

Megan, who is studying Maths and Computer Science at Queens University Belfast, and is a data analytics engineer intern with All State, presented on how unnecessary emails, video calls and storage in email systems is a type of pollution and needs to be addressed.

“It all generates carbon, so delete emails, don’t send an email unless it’s necessary and while video conferencing is significantly better than flying to attend meetings and conferences, it pollutes more than a telephone call.

“We should also be aware of the companies that are trying to be carbon neutral and are making efforts to offset the impact their activity has on our climate,” Megan told the conference.